The American South was the only region in the world, except
for Haiti, in which slavery was overthrown by force of arms. It
was the only area in which formerly prosperous slaveowners were deprived of
the right to hold public office. It was also the only place in
which slave owners received no compensation for the loss of their
slave property. Altogether, slaveowners lost $2.5 billion in slave
property.

Most important of all, the American South was the only region
in which former slaves received civil and political rights, including
full citizenship rights as well as the right to vote and hold
elective office. The South was also the only post-emancipation
society in which former slaves formed successful political alliances
with whites.

Yet for all of its uniqueness, reconstruction in the South
ultimately followed many of the same patterns found elsewhere
in the Western Hemisphere. In the end, southern planters managed
to hold onto their land, which formed the basis of their economic
and political power. By 1877, the Democratic Party, the party
of white supremacy, had regained political control over each of
the former Confederate states.

Throughout the western hemisphere, the end of slavery was followed
by a period of reconstruction in which race relations were redefined
and new systems of labor emerged. In former slave societies throughout
the Americas, ex-slaves sought to free themselves from the gang
system of labor on plantations and establish small, self-sufficient
farms. Meanwhile, planters and local governments tried to restore
the plantation system. The outcome, in almost all former slave
societies, was the emergence of a caste system of race relations
and a system of involuntary labor such as peonage, debt bondage,
apprenticeship, contract labor, tenant farming, and sharecropping.

In every post-emancipation society, the abolition of slavery
resulted in acute labor shortages and declining productivity,
spurring efforts to restore plantation discipline. Even in Haiti,
where black revolution had overthrown slavery, repeated attempts
were made to restore the plantation system. On Caribbean islands
like Barbados, where land was totally controlled by whites, the
plantation system was re-imposed. In other areas like Jamaica,
where former slaves were able to squat on unsettled land and set
up subsistence farms, staple production fell sharply.

To counteract a sharp decline in sugar production, the British
government imported thousands of "coolie" laborers from
Asia into the Caribbean. To force former slaves to work on plantations,
Caribbean governments imposed heavy taxes and enforced strict
vagrancy laws.

Similar efforts to re-impose forced labor under new names also
occurred in the post-Civil War South, but with a crucial difference.
Having defeated the Confederacy and emancipated the slaves, many
northern Republicans were convinced that securing the peace and
protecting the civil rights of former slaves required unprecedented
extensions of federal power. A titanic struggle took place between
President Johnson -- who permitted the establishment in 1865 of
all-white governments that restricted the rights of ex-slaves --
and Republican Congress that was determined to protect the
basic rights of former slaves.

The Republican commitment to free labor would prevent the planters
from re-imposing slavery in a new guise. But if the freedmen were
not reduced to servitude, neither would many become independent
landowners. Instead, landlords and laborers would compromise their
differences by adopting a system of sharecropping that would perpetuate
southern poverty for decades.

Reconstruction also had a more positive legacy. It was during
this period that African Americans in the South established churches
and schools that would provide the institutional basis for later
challenges to inequality. And the constitutional amendments ratified
during Reconstruction would provide the legal basis for the attack
on racial segregation during the 1940s, '50s, and '60s.

Like an earthquake that shakes the ground and then subsides,
Reconstruction came and went. But it did fundamentally alter the
nation's landscape.